Pokemon Go has been all over the news the last week or two. Although I have not played Pokemon Go, it seems like almost everybody else has! People have also been registering lots of Pokemon-related domain names. Last week, I wrote an article about nearly 4,000 .com and .net domain names being registered with the word Pokemon in them.
According to this tweet from NameBio, PokemonGo.net sold for $20,950 at DropCatch.com yesterday:
Top sale of the day is pokemongo(.)net for $20,950 at DropCatch. Daily market report: https://t.co/emyOGVJGZl
— NameBio (@NameBio) July 17, 2016
Wow.
To put things in perspective a bit, this will be one of the top 15 .net sales of 2016 once Ron Jackson adds it to his year to date sales report. It will also likely be listed as one of the top sales of the week when the weekly report is published.
I am not sure why this domain name has such value though. It does not appear to have been developed before, so I doubt there is much traffic. It looks like PokemonGo.net has been registered on and off since 2008.
If someone plans to build a website on it, I would imagine there is some legal risk. I also think there could be ways to use it without legal troubles. I am clearly not an expert in the legal field though. Maybe Nintendo or a related entity bought the domain name and will use it or hold it for defensive purposes. I was not following the DropCatch auction, so I am not sure who was bidding.
It will be interesting to see how the new owner uses the domain name or what is done with it.
I don’t believe DNJournal reports any sales from DropCatch.com, only sales that are reported to them from marketplaces directly.
A pretty poor buy if you ask me – first of all because it’s a TM domain and secondly because it’s a .net
I completely agree with Doron. Poor purchase. Also there is a question whether the buyer will end up paying to DropCatch or will they re-auction if the buyer fails to make the payment on time.
I’m not sure Nintendo would have acquired it like that. It doesn’t make much sense for them to buy it at auction for over $20k when they can simply UDRP it for a fraction of that cost and take control over it. However, if that’s the strategy (UDRP), you kind of have to feel sorry for the auction winner who will lose their entire investment with no refund. Playing with trademarks can be a dangerous game.
I feel sorry for the people who own generic / dictionary / short acronym .com domain names and have to pay legal fees for BS UDRPs… I don’t really feel badly for people who buy names that have TMs.
Agree…
why should you feel sorry?
I don’t feel sorry for suckers and they deserve it!!
Don’t make fun of someone based on mistakes. It’s actually a human thing. And I don’t believe your a bot.